Books: Reconciliation Stories, by Dorothy Speak

Reconciliation Stories by Dorothy Speak (Self-published, 323 pages, $20 softcover) — Let me begin with a rant. What has happened to Canadian publishing?

Why would a respected and talented writer with a track record have to resort to self-publishing?

That’s what happened to Dorothy Speak, author of two short story collections and a well-received 2001 novel, The Wife Tree, which I reviewed for this newspaper. Margaret Atwood, Philip Marchand and W.P. Kinsella have praised her work; the Los Angeles Times and The Globe and Mail have published glowing reviews.

Speak, a native of Seaforth, Ont., who now lives in Ottawa, sent me her new book because of my earlier review. She doesn’t have a publisher who sends out review copies. Bookstores don’t want to stock her book because unsold copies can’t be returned to a distributor.

Random House, publisher of The Wife Tree, turned down Speak’s collection of short stories and said they were too sad, according to Speak.

The manuscript then went the rounds of other houses, including smaller literary presses. No one wanted this collection of 15 short stories, eight of which first appeared in literary journals such as The New Quarterly, The Antigonish Review and Descant.

These are superb and memorable stories about marriage, divorce, death of parents, the mystery of love, the enduring if annoying family ties.

The prose is polished and the settings seem familiar, like turning a street corner and there it is — the street you know you have seen, whether it’s in Ottawa or British Columbia. There are also absurd comedic elements and the dialogue is right on.

Speak’s characters are alive, like Pilar in Made-Up Stories. Pilar has always considered her family members to be Philistines and takes over the dispersal of her druggie brother’s ashes.

She’s a tank of a woman whose parents and siblings fear her. Pilar is astonished to learn this and wonders at the end, “What is this love they feel for each other?”

I loved the book’s title story, Reconciliation. Young Imogene cannot understand why her mother Joyce left the family. The father cannot understand it either. Joyce was “searching for something.”

Father and daughter cope. The bossy grandmother arrives.

“I don’t think she ever bleached Imogene’s socks,” Grandma announces before her departure from the scene. Imogene soon meets Joyce’s rude young boyfriend, Luke, who is writing a thesis on a Canadian poet. He names his plants; he also punches Imogene’s father in the nose.

Joyce, meanwhile, is writing a play. Leaving at the end a visit, Imogene sees “through the rain-streaked window a large awkward woman on the porch, waving, resolutely solitary.”

The spoiled doctor’s wife in the story Do No Harm is annoying and the awful father’s friend in A Penny to Save make you want to feed him to the lions. Good old dad is awful, too, with his stupid game of scraping butter off his little girl’s bell.

I felt sorry for the aged parents in Authenticity and sorry, too, for the daughter, a wannabe writer who became a doctor. The parents move to her town and expect to be part of her life.

Speak’s voice is her own, but she reminds me often of Margaret Laurence (and makes me wonder if a young Laurence would be published today).

If you want to read this book, order it from your bookseller. It’s distributed through Ingram and also available as an ebook.

You won’t be sorry. The book is handsomely designed, professional in appearance. The writing is very very fine. In a phone interview, Speak told me she still writes five hours a day.

Veronica Ross is a Kitchener writer and fiction editor of The Antigonish Review.